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Banks Urge Removal of Cyber Bill Provision Allowing DHS Oversight

Nov. 12 —
Congressional leaders should remove a Senate cybersecurity bill
provision that would allow the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) to regulate the cyber practices of critical financial
services and other infrastructure, the American Bankers Association
and 46 other trade organizations said Nov. 12 in a letter.

DHS and other regulatory agencies “seemingly would
have free rein to assess certain businesses’ cybersecurity gaps and
develop unilateral mitigation strategies for each critical
infrastructure entity without input from industry,” said the letter
from the ABA, the Financial Services Roundtable and the Electronic
Transactions Association, as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,
and groups representing telecommunications, trucking, power and
other industries.

The Senate on Oct. 27 passed the Cybersecurity
Information Sharing Act (CISA), providing legal immunity to
companies that voluntarily share cyber threat data with the federal
government. The Senate bill (S. 754) must be reconciled with
similar legislation (H.R. 1560, H.R. 1731) passed by the
House.

The Senate provision in question, authored by Sen.
Susan Collins (R-Maine), would apply to critical infrastructure, in
which a “cybersecurity incident could reasonably result in
catastrophic regional or national effects on public health or
safety, economic security, or national security.”

It calls on DHS to assess to what extent a critical entity reports cyberattacks to DHS or to its existing federal regulator in a timely manner. It also requires DHS, in conjunction with existing federal regulators, to assess and create a strategy to ensure “to the greatest extent feasible, a cyber security incident affecting such entity would no longer reasonably result in catastrophic regional or national effects,” defined as causing more than $50 billion in economic damage, 2,500 fatalities or a severe degradation of national security.

Collins: DHS Oversight Needed

Collins said on the Senate floor Oct. 26 that
another amendment she offered was not brought up for a vote. It
would have required banks and other entities to report cyberattacks
to DHS.

On the amendment included in the bill, Collins said in a Nov. 12 statement to Bloomberg BNA, “For 99 percent of businesses, the voluntary information sharing framework established in the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) will be sufficient. It would be a mistake, however, to treat the country’s electric grid the same as a chain of ice cream shops under the provisions of this bill. Without this amendment, these very different entities will be treated exactly the same under this legislation.”

Collins' statement also said that National Intelligence Director James Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee that a large-scale cyberattack against the U.S. infrastructure is his top cybersecurity concern and that National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers had ranked the nation’s preparedness in protection of critical infrastructure from cyberattacks at a “5 or 6” out of 10.

“The bare minimum we should do is to ask DHS and the appropriate federal agencies to describe what more could be done to prevent a catastrophic cyber attack on critical infrastructure that could cause thousands of deaths and/or a devastating blow to our economy or national defense,” her statement said.

But in the Nov. 12 letter, industry groups said they
have “significant concerns” about the amendment because it “runs
counter to the voluntary nature” of companies sharing information
about cyberattacks with the government. “We support and already
engage in a strong voluntary partnership of information sharing
with the U.S. Government that will grow stronger with the passage
of CISA and the House bills,” the groups said.

The groups also said the amendment “presumes a
deficiency in current cybersecurity capabilities of covered
critical infrastructure entities. In fact, businesses are spending
billions of dollars to counter cyber-attacks from nation-state
adversaries, criminal organizations, and other malicious
actors.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Kery Murakami
in Washington at kmurakami@bna.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Mike Ferullo in Washington at mferullo@bna.com

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